Muhammad Ali in quotes and pictures

Superficially speaking, it's hard to imagine an odder couple than Muhammad Ali and George Lois. Ali, nee Cassius Clay, was a trash-talking black boxer from Louisville, Kentucky, who brought home an Olympic gold medal at nineteen and went on to become the century's most controversial and legendary fighter. Lois is a cranky Greek ad man who invented the MTV logo and original slogan ("I want my MTV!"), re-branded ESPN, and launched Tommy Hilfiger. In the '60s, as a consultant for Esquire, he produced a series of famous covers that are still cited as classics of the genre. Bullshitters with the talent to back up their bravura, they were probably destined to become friends. The two first met at the height of the Vietnam War, when Ali's vocal opposition to the draft threatened to derail his career. Lois convinced the fighter to pose for Esquire as the martyred St. Sebastian, riddled with poison arrows. The now-famous cover helped resuscitate Ali's ailing reputation and became one of the most iconic images of the decade. (37 years later, as our very own eminence grise, he produced a similar image to illustrate a story on Tom Cruise and Scientology for Radar.)

After watching his longtime friend fall victim to Parkinson's Disease, the 75-year-old Lois decided to produce a memoir of the boxer, who was a first-hand witness to some of the most politically charged moments of the modern era. "I wanted it to be funny ... and I wanted it to be goddamned serious." Ali Rap: Muhammad Ali, The First Heavyweight Champion of Rap manages to be both. Crafted entirely from Ali's soundbites (with accompanying illustrations by Lois), the book blurs the distinction between biography and autobiography, proving that no one is better suited to talk about Ali than Ali himself.

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